Volume 15 , Issue 31

Establishment Of Towns (Grant County Kansas)

Some of the towns you might have come across in Grant county, Kansas, were Zionville, Golden, Shockey, Gognac, Surprise, Lawson, Waterford, and Cincinnati. The old town site of Cincinnati, later Appomattox, is marked by the farm of Henry Miller.

A great many people have wondered how one town could have so many names; Surprise, Cincinnati, Tilden and Appomattox. The town of Surprise was stated about the same time as Ulysses. It was intended that these two town should oppose each other for the county seat. A number of men living close to Surprise were interested in making Surprise the county seat and were opposed to Ulysses. They were unable to make a satisfactory arrangement with the Surprise Town company for an interest in Surprise, so they decided to locate a "People's" town under the Federal land laws and entered a tract of land two miles south of Surprise as a townsite, which they called, Cincinnati, early in 1887.

As the county was named Grant and the town of Ulysses being named for General and President Grant, it seemed that the new town of Cincinnati wished to be equally patriotic, so after Surprise and Cincinnati had consolidated, they changed the post office of Surprise to Tilden.

Tilden was a candidate for president of the united States on the Democratic ticket in 1876 against Hayes. In 1887 Grover Cleveland was the president. The new town wished to be even more patriotic than before, so Colonel Taylor, who lived-in Hutchinson, Kansas, and was president of the Surprise town company, and had served in the Civil War under General Sheridan, wrote to him and asked him for an appropriate name for a town to be made county seat of Grant county. General Sheridan wrote and suggested the name of Appomattox, as that was where General lee had surrendered to General Grant in the Civil war.

The name of the consolidated towns became Appomattox. The county seat election was between Appomattox and Ulysses.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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